


Star Chamber

by tofty



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-07
Updated: 2007-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-15 09:40:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofty/pseuds/tofty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione makes a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Star Chamber

**Author's Note:**

> Set during _Deathly Hallows_ , in the trio's first days together at Grimmauld Place.

Ginny had told Hermione that Ron snored, and Hermione thought she'd been exaggerating about how awful it was until the night in third year they sneaked up the stairs to stand at the boys' dormitory door, Ginny helpfully sorting Ron's snores from the other boys' softer ones, and God, that was the night Hermione'd known that she really did love Ron, because only someone who really loved him would even try to stand that unspeakable noise, much less find it kind of lovable.

Tonight, as then, the sound is more comforting than otherwise. Hermione lies on her back, hair washing over her head. She can feel the cool silk of the velvet sofa cushions against the back of her neck, and that's comforting too. The faint stench of must and rot, something a little cloying beneath it. Anything to keep her grounded, in touch with her rational mind, which she can feel slipping away in the darkness.

Because the thing is. The thing is this: she can feel the walls shimmering around her. The feeling she used to get sometimes, two years ago, which brushed at her even in a house full of people, it's much more acute now, with just the three of them. The house knows they’re there, she can tell. She imagines that it doesn't want them. That it will make them sorry they ever stopped here. Tonight, she can't get the thought out of her head that the house is listening to her. It knows what she's thinking, and it's ready to turn against her.

She stares at the ceiling and tries to relax. Concentrates on the cobwebs and the ridiculously Jacobean chandelier, heavy curved arms of bronze or maybe deeply tarnished brass, real candles which she's never seen anyone change; she tries to remember the charm to keep candles burning without melting down the wax, but can't quite picture the incantation or the precise wrist movement required even though she's performed it perfectly for Flitwick. Relaxing, that's right out, because rationality seems to be failing her.

The ceilings here are unfamiliar to her, not like home, tidy and foursquare; not like Hogwarts either. She thinks wistfully of the ceiling in the Great Hall, the stars and storm clouds imprinted on the Gothic arches. She imagines clouds obscuring stars, stars pushing through the clouds, the moon easing its way slowly into view, reflected on the polished benches and tables.

She stops breathing as she realizes that the stars, the moon, the clouds, they're all there, on the ceiling of the drawing room, with her and Harry and Ron. Just a few minutes ago, the darkness was so total that she couldn't see Ron three feet away, but now, she can see him perfectly clearly, mouth wide open; the chandelier, the cobwebs; and Harry a few feet further away, covers kicked off in restlessness and the greyhound-sleekness of his knobby spine visible through his thin t-shirt, the light of the stars casting him in pale blue.

"Stop it," she whispers, hands clenched at her side, "stop it this isn't real this isn't real." The moon and stars are soundlessly extinguished, and she gasps, at the sudden blackness as much as at the knowledge that the house is responding to her. Panting, she tries to think of nothing, then of the spell for lighting candles, and just as she thinks the word _illuminatus_ , the candles on the chandelier flare gently, a faint sulphuric burst before burning more steadily.

And the walls are wavering again, just as they used to the last time she slept here, but instead of thrumming with hostility, they're -- she can't quite get a handle on it. It's nothing so simple or positive as friendliness, there's wariness there, but it's not ill-intentioned.

She stares at the candles, trying to guess at what the house is telling her, and how she knows she's truly beyond exhaustion tonight, aside from taking comfort from the choking buzzsaw sounds coming from Ron's direction, is that the answer is coming more quickly than the Illuminatus charm did: it's supplication she's feeling, the house is reaching out to her, and the thought suddenly occurs to her that it might have been Sirius who inspired all that hostility in the house, Sirius who hated the house and who perhaps was hated in return.

Tentatively, she reaches up to the chandelier, and just as tentatively, one of the chandelier arms dips. A drop of wax hits her fingertip. There is no hostility tonight. The house does not want her gone. The house wants, she thinks, a family, someone to love and to love it, and if it means making their time here (however long or short a time they spend here) easier, then by God, she will court this house like she's never courted any boy.

 _I will tell you my secrets_. Perhaps the house is speaking now, or perhaps she's just imagining that, or perhaps she's just imagined this whole episode; but perhaps now that she's suddenly feeling a little better, perhaps now that she might be able to sleep, she ought not question whether any of this is real. _I will be what you need me to be_. And if she can't think her way into ending all this just yet, well, she'd better take her solace where she can find it, from Ron, from the house, from wherever.

Smiling up at the chandelier, she reaches for Ron's hand with waxy fingertips and allows her eyes to shut.


End file.
